Bod Squad 2, The

The Bod Squad was a great little budget platformer released late into the C64’s life back in 1992 by Zeppelin Games. The game had you controlling a cute green blob which had to go around various locations, including the Pyramids.

It was well recieved, though never caused a huge storm like maybe it should of. It’s a decent game which deserves more of a glowing mention these days. Recently C64 Endings uncovered the end sequence for the game which details to look out for Bod Squad 2. And we believe that Bod Squad 2 made an appearance on the Commodore Format early warning scanner at somepoint.

It could have potentially been quite easy to create a sequel, as Kent may well have planned just to re-use the current engine with a different series of maps. But was any of this ever started?

Kent eventually went on to work on the SNES, so its possible something big came up before he could finish work on the game. Either that or Zeppelin had decided not to go ahead with a sequel (Maybe completion was too late into the C64’s life?)

We managed to catch up with Kent (http://www.evolvic.co.uk/), who had sad news. Unfortunately it was out of his hands, and Zeppelin decided against a sequel (Due to the declining C64 market). Kent had written a level designer with a sequel in mind, and in fact the original game was meant to be a much bigger game than was eventually released.

According to Kent, the original game demo (which was to be published by Digital Magic before they collapsed – previews appearing in magazines stating it was coming soon from that company), was sent out to multiple companies and the top of the list was Thalamus, but unfortunately they just got the demo at the point of them getting out of games (or their collapse). They mentioned to Kent that they would have snapped up Bod Squad if he was 6 months earlier with his submission, and the title would have been released at full price with all the levels.

In the end Zeppelin took on the game and it was rush released with 3 levels – a decision that Kent was not happy with. The rest of the levels would have been the sequel that never was.

As a result, the sequel is pretty much vapourware – unless Kent digs out the level editors and some of the long lost levels. But Kent is determined to do a release of the game which was as originally intended, and on his website (Link above) there is a new Flash development of Bod Squad which aims to have everything – so keep an eye out!